


Falling in at Night

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Series: Walls and Windmills [2]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Canon Relationships, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Lovers to Friends, Post-Divorce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-16 22:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4642038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After her father is taken away in “Unnatural Habits,” Jack takes Rosie home -- not to her home, but to the house they once shared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling in at Night

**Author's Note:**

> I am a Phryne/Jack shipper through and through, but I also love Rosie Sanderson and am a huge proponent of her character being portrayed as a full and rounded person and not just as The Ex. ♥
> 
> Apologies for the length, but I couldn't bring myself to break this one into chapters. 
> 
> Be sure and read the End Notes, for a preview of the next story!

  
_Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night._  
_I miss you like hell._  
_– Edna St. Vincent Millay_  


The wood moulding was smooth beneath her gloved fingers, as she swayed back and forth, clinging to the shallow shelf that ran against the back wall behind City South’s front desk. She concentrated on that feeling of smoothness, patting, stroking, taking deep breaths and struggling not to dissolve into the hysterical outburst she could feel coming. 

The door to Jack’s office opened. 

Rosie Sanderson waited a moment until she was sure her face was composed, turned round, and saw her. The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher, looking exhausted and numb. Their eyes met, and for a split second, Rosie saw embarrassment, and pity. 

The absolute _last_ things she wanted to see on anyone’s face at that moment, let alone on Miss Fisher’s.

She exhaled a loud, angry huff and turned back to the wall and the smooth wood under her hands. 

Part of her wanted so badly to believe that what Sidney and Father were accused of was a lie. It was a put-up job, surely. A railroading. Obviously they were being framed by friends of the disgraced Commissioner Hall. And Jack, Jack would find out the truth, as he had when Father had been suspected of that poor working girl’s murder. 

But Jack said he had found out the truth. And whatever Rosie might want to believe of the rest of the police force and every politician in the city, she simply could not believe that Jack would frame a man he had honored and emulated, and even loved. 

Jack might have failed as a husband, but he had never lied to her. And while she had failed equally as a wife, she had never but once had any reason to doubt his word. 

Never but once, in Miss Fisher’s cool ocean-coloured parlour. 

She barely heard the sound of many footsteps on the worn scuffed floors, but when her father began to speak, in his clipped policeman’s voice, she froze. What would he say? What _could_ he possibly say? 

“I didn't know what Fletcher was up to, Rosie. I swear.” 

Rosie whirled on him, aghast and appalled. There were tears in her eyes and barely-checked rage in her choked voice, and she didn’t care who saw it. Not Jack, not his sweet little constable, and certainly not Miss Fisher. “How could you not know?” she retorted in disgust, while inside she wanted to scream. “Those... poor girls!” 

“Please, please try to understand—” 

“How could you?” Her own father— His own godson, her childhood friend—her fiancé! Oh God, she couldn’t think of Sidney now, her voice was already beginning to crack under the strain. “How could you?” she demanded, with the vague wild notion that if she didn’t get an answer that would cause her suddenly world to make sense again, she would go mad. 

Father said nothing. 

Rosie drew in a breath that felt like knives. “I can't look at you,” she said, finally breaking. She turned back to the wall and clung to the shelf for dear life, while the waves of anguish began to pummel at her heart and drive out all rational thought. 

She paced and rocked, sniffling, still trying to be the upright proper controlled woman she’d always been in the face of tragedies. She’d buried her first and only baby and been strong at the funeral for Jack. Her only brother had been killed at Gallipoli and she had been a pillar for her mother and father. When Jack came back scarred and broken, she had tried to be brave for him. She had sat alone at her mother’s deathbed because Jack was standing in the policeman’s strike and Father was trying to save him from being dismissed, and never let anyone see her shed even a single tear. She had always been brave because damn it, _someone_ had to be. But now... but now... “Oh,” she moaned, as though something was trying to crawl out of her chest. “Oh God...” 

The words came automatically. It might have been a prayer, or a lamentation. It hardly mattered. There was nothing else to say. 

Awkwardly, feeling ashamed, she began to cry. The narrow shelf and the pitted white plaster of the wall disgusted her now. She lurched back and turned around, vaguely intending to flee from the station to someplace dark and safe and solitary, where she could lick her wounds in peace.

She turned around and Jack was there, with tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, looking as devastated as she felt. He reached for her arm.

Rosie jerked away blindly. “Ohhh, don't talk to...” And then there was no point, no point to being brave at all, let alone in front of Jack, who had been her husband once and who had always, always been there when she couldn’t be brave anymore. 

Her vision swam with vertigo and tears. She dropped her forehead onto his chest and let the wracking sobs come as they liked. “Oh Jack...” It was all she could cling to, his name. She felt his hand on her hair, comforting her, guiding her head to rest on his shoulder so that he could hold her. “No.... Oh God...” 

He rocked her as he had when she lost their baby boy, shushing her gently. 

As though from far away, she heard the sound of the station door opening, and then closing again. 

They stood there for what seemed like hours to Rosie, as she sobbed and screamed against the shoulder of Jack’s gray flannel suit. His hands on her back and in her hair felt like half-faded memories, indescribably sweet, relentlessly sad. But when she finally slumped in his embrace, and accepted the handkerchief he silently offered her, she realized it had barely been five minutes. 

Five minutes since her father had walked off to the first of the cells where he would spend the rest of his life. Five minutes since he had tried to put all the blame on Sidney Fletcher. Five minutes since the world ended. 

Jack waited while she dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. “I’ll take you home,” he said, his deep voice soft as ashes. 

“Oh God, no,” Rosie groaned. She wadded up his handkerchief and shoved it into her purse without thinking. 

“You can’t stay here,” he pointed out, rather unnecessarily.

“I know that, but... where am I supposed to go?” Rosie hid her face in her hands. The weeping had stopped, for the moment, but there was another onslaught of something lurking just beyond her ken. She needed to get away. “I can’t go back to Mr. Fletcher’s house and I _won’t_ go back to father’s, and my sister... oh God, Jack, I’ll can’t break all of this to Phoebe, not tonight.” She pressed her lips together tightly to forestall the howl of frustration (she prayed it was only frustration and knew the prayer to be futile) building in her chest. 

She grabbed her purse again, intending to rifle through it to see how much money she had. If she had enough for a hotel room, for a night or two... some place discreet, where reporters could be turned away at the door... 

Jack’s hand closed over hers, and she looked up expectantly. “I’m taking you home.”

Rosie blinked in surprise. Then, feeling suddenly drained and shaky, she nodded. Jack helped her into her coat, then grabbed his overcoat and his hat and locked his office. He helped her into his car as though she was made of glass, and drove through the mostly-deserted streets in silence, glancing over at her constantly to make sure she was still all right. 

And she was. Outwardly, at least. Outwardly was what mattered. 

The car turned down familiar residential streets and came to rest before a single-story bungalow with a roof of terracotta tiles. Rosie looked up almost hesitantly, afraid to see that the house she had entered as a bride seventeen years before was as altered as everything else had suddenly become. 

But it was the same house, with the little bay window of Jack’s library overlooking the rosebushes that lined the front walkway, and the little sheltered porch where Rosie had sat and sipped lemonade in the summer, while she read the American detective stories that Jack and her father so loathed. 

Jack came round to open the car door for her. “Come inside,” he urged, gently taking her hand. 

The path was dark, lit only by the dim glow of the street lamps, but Rosie’s feet remembered the way, and Jack led her without stumbling. Inside, the button on the wall for the electric light bathed the little entryway in warm yellow. She let Jack take her hat and coat, her gloves and her purse, and put them all in the closet with his overcoat and fedora, the same way he always had. Except in the last years of their marriage, the gestures had been rote, without thought. Now his care vibrated through every action. She could feel his caring, his compassion, his solicitude, overlaying the brutal emotions of earlier. She felt over-sensitized and raw. He guided her with the feather-light touch of his fingers on the small of her back, into the living room, coaxed her to sit on the sofa opposite the cold fireplace. 

He stooped down beside her, not touching her now. “What can I do?” 

“...A drink?” It was the first thing that came to her, the automatic response. But on further consideration, it seemed like the right thing as well. “Yes. A whiskey-and-soda, Jack, please.” 

Jack nodded and moved immediately to the room’s little sideboard to fulfill her request. Strange that he should still have a full soda siphon at the ready, Rosie found herself thinking. He always took his whiskey neat; it was she who could never manage raw spirits. Perhaps he’d taken up entertaining, in her absence, though he’d always been a reluctant host before. Perhaps he had friends over, sometimes; they still had some mutual friends, people who had refused to be shocked by their divorce or to take sides. Lee Gibson, the detective inspector from City Central, who had been at grammar school and the Police Academy and in the trenches with Jack. Jack’s cousin Emily, who was a photographer in Fitzroy. Edgar and Alicia Carlyle. Sergeant Alec Wallace from Ballarat. 

_And women friends,_ her mind supplied, unbidden. 

He brought the glass to her and resumed his place, crouched down beside her, below her natural line of sight, the arm of the sofa between the two of them. He was trying to be non-threatening, she realized numbly. “I’m not afraid of you, Jack.”

“I know. I thought, being... here... you might want your space.”

She looked around, her eyes instinctively hunting for familiar things. His cycling trophies on the wooden mantelpiece that Jack had built himself, the photographs of his parents on the back wall, over the Wertheim upright piano he had inherited when his mother died, the books on the low bookshelves flanking the sturdy brick fireplace. Many things were missing – all of her belongings had long ago been removed or packed away – but the things that remained were old friends. She sipped her drink with shaking hands, and shook her head. 

“Jack, I’m as alone in this world as I’m ever likely to be. The last thing I want right now is space.”

He stood and sat down on the sofa beside her, and put his arm around her shoulders. Rosie drained the rest of her whiskey-and-soda in one gulp, swallowed, coughed sharply, and then buried her face in his shoulder. 

She cried for a long, long time, first the uncontrollable hot flood of tears that she had been fighting since leaving the station, then the dry choking sobs that hurt her throat and her jaw, and then finally the low senseless keening up from the bottom well of her soul. 

Jack moved only once, to shift round on the sofa cushions and pull her more securely into his arms. “You’re not alone, Rosie,” he said, the low soft rumble somehow making itself heard over her weeping. “I’m still here. Whatever you need, whatever happens... I’m still here.”

It helped, a little. “Thank you, Jack,” she whispered, when she could speak without tears breaking through every word. “Thank you... thank you.” But everything still hurt. 

He patted his pockets, looking for his handkerchief. Rosie stretched her sore cheek muscles into a smile. “It’s in my purse.”

“Right, right... you always did like to steal my hankies,” he teased. “C’mere.” He cradled her face in his big hand and gently wiped her face with the end of his tie. “I’ve got others,” he said, when she protested. 

Rosie closed her eyes and let him clean her face. He was as tender with her as he would have been with a brand-new baby, and the feel of the silk and the feel of his fingers seemed to blend together. “Oh,” she groaned, pressing a hand to her forehead. “I should not have drunk that whiskey so quickly... And God knows the crying didn’t help...”

“I’m sure He understands,” said Jack dryly.

“I could do with an aspirin...”

“Not that soon after the grog.” He twitched his lips into a thoughtful frown. “What about a bath?”

“That... sounds heavenly, actually.”

Jack nodded and eased himself out of her grip (she hadn’t realized she’d been clutching him quite so tightly) and then stepped across the hall to the bathroom. In a moment, Rosie heard the sound of water pouring into the tub. She reached down and removed her shoes, and rubbed her aching feet. Every part of her ached. She unclipped her stockings and rolled them down, then smoothed them out and folded them, and stowed them away inside her shoes. 

“How can any of this be real?” she murmured, not sure who she was addressing. The Almighty, perhaps, or the pictures on the wall. Her shoes, even. “How could Sidney... how could _Father_...?” She closed her eyes hard to force back the tears that the despairing musings threatened to bring on. The water cut off, and then she heard Jack walk back.

“Rosie?” She reached up and tightly gripped the hand he laid on her shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you in the tub.”

She nodded and stood up, and followed him through the darkened dining room, past the closed door of the kitchen, past the open door of the master bedroom, and into the bathroom, which to her surprise actually did look different than the last time she’d been there. “You put lino down,” she noted, scanning the blue-and-tan checks that now covered the floor. “I like the colours.”

Jack smiled and did not comment on the inanity of her noticing such a thing at such a time. Perhaps he didn’t think it all that strange. “It gave me something to do,” he said simply. “And it was easier than trying to keep all that tile clean. Laid it down in the kitchen, as well. Different pattern.” 

He had set out a towel and a face flannel and soap, and put down the bathmat for her. It went without saying that there was no cold cream or toilet water, or any of the other little accoutrements that a woman would have in a bathroom she frequented. Rosie felt guiltily comforted by that. 

“Shall I step out?” Jack asked. 

Rosie smiled slightly. “I don’t see why you should. It’s not as though I need to worry about my virtue.” _And it’s not as if you’ve never seen me naked before._

He stood before the open door, his hands folded in front of him, while she stripped off her dress and slip and her network of undergarments. “I’ll put these aside for tomorrow,” said Jack, holding out his arms for her clothes. “There’s nothing for you to wear to sleep, I’m afraid, unless you don’t mind sleeping in one of my shirts.”

“I don’t mind, Jack.” She stepped into the tub and gripped the sides to lower herself into the warm, enveloping water. Jack ducked out of the bathroom to put her clothes away, and returned with a light blue shirt—one of his pajama tops, judging by the piping on the collar and cuffs. He placed it on top of the toilet. 

“I won’t be far away. Call, if you need me—“

She reached up a beseeching hand from the tub. “Stay? Please. I’d rather you stayed. Please.”

Jack swallowed and then nodded. “I’ll just get a chair.” He retreated, leaving the bathroom door open. 

He was gone a few moments longer than expected. When he returned with a chair from the kitchen, Rosie saw that he had stopped to remove his jacket and waistcoat, and to loosen his tie. He was also carrying the whiskey bottle and a glass. “I think that one drink was more than enough for me,” she began.

“It’s for me.” He sat down and sloshed a goodly measure into the glass. “Hell of a night.”

Rosie closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the smooth, damp enamel. “Hell of a night,” she agreed, tiredly. “Will Sidney Fletcher live?” she asked, an indeterminate time later.

Jack started. “Sorry,” he yawned. “I, uh, thought you were asleep.”

“No. Just thinking.” She opened her eyes and glanced at him. “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean to wake you.” She sat up and reached for the soap. The water was starting to cool. “Will he?”

“He’s in no danger from the bullet, though there’s a chance of hypothermia from his having been in the water so long.” There was a grim sort of amusement to Jack’s last words that Rosie chose not to dwell on. “But he’s strong and healthy otherwise. Yes, he’ll live.”

“…And then? Will he hang?”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “Do you want me to be kind or do you want me to be honest?”

“Honest, Jack.”

“He’ll hang if I have anything to do with it. He was careful to work through middlemen, didn’t ever get his own hands dirty. He could potentially get off with a life sentence, if his counsel is clever… except for what happened tonight.”

“He was prepared to kill your Miss Fisher.”

“He was prepared to kill all of them.” Jack stared down into his half-full glass of whiskey. “We have witnesses to Fletcher’s full confession, though he wasn’t in any condition to repeat it for a police stenographer, and De Vere, the ship captain, has confessed as well.”

“And… Father?”

“Won’t admit to anything outright, but—“

“But it’s obvious. Damn it,” Rosie murmured, scrubbing her arms viciously. “God _damn_ it all.”

“Easy,” said Jack, sounding a touch alarmed. He set his glass aside and knelt next to the tub to take the flannel away. “You’ll scrape yourself raw.”

She looked at him with tears in her eyes. She felt raw. She felt exposed, and not because she was sitting naked in a bathtub in front of her ex-husband. She felt ashamed, and frightened. She wanted to be held. She wanted Jack to take the pins from her hair and wash it and comb it, so that she could feel his soothing fingers on her scalp. She wanted… God only knew. “Can I have the towel, please?” she said quietly. 

He left her alone to dry and dress, while he went to make tea. Rosie pulled on the pale blue pajama top slowly. It was cotton, clean and washed soft, and smelled of laundry soap. She buttoned it with careful fingers. It covered her extremities, but only just. She pulled the pins from her curly hair and set them in a straight line on the shelf above the sink. She brushed her hair, and braided it back. There was nothing in the cupboard to secure the bottom with, so she let it be.

Jack had built a fire in the living room grate, and fixed a tray with a mug of tea and a few sandwiches and some of his own biscuits. He put her on the sofa, surrounded her with pillows, and pulled a faded patchwork quilt over her bare legs. She assured him she was comfortable and forced herself to eat a little, and then watched him disappear into the hall by the front door, reemerging with his overcoat and his hat. “You’re going out?”

“I have something I need to do. Try to sleep.”

Something in the pit of Rosie’s stomach twisted. He was going to Miss Fisher, she was sure of it. Her hands curled around her mug. “Will you be back tonight?”

His jaw tightened minutely. He nodded, and squeezed her hand. 

She watched him go. He would come back, she had no doubt of that. But he would come back with _her_ lipstick on his mouth, her perfume in his hair, the imprint of her hands on his body. To her muted surprise, Rosie found she didn’t begrudge Jack the comfort of Phryne Fisher’s bed, after the night they’d all had. 

The last time she had been intimate with Sidney flashed through her mind, churning what little was in her stomach. It had been only a few days ago. She set her teeth and forced herself to think of it. 

_He was gentle. He was tender. He tasted me. He came inside me and he made love to me and told me he loved me._

_Those poor girls… those poor girls… Did he touch them? Did he test them before they were sold?_

_Sidney wanted children… knew it was unlikely… tried anyway, so many times… Christ, what if I’m—?_

_Those poor girls… Father… ‘How could you not know?’ He must have known. They were just babies, just babies…_

Rosie turned over and cried herself helplessly to sleep. 

She dreamed of Jack. They were back in his office at the station, naked, kissing. He was touching her gently to make her want him. It wasn’t working, but she didn’t seem to mind. She took him in her hands and tried to rouse him. Nothing. Jack only smiled, and Rosie felt herself smiling in return. It was a lovely feeling, there with Jack and with no expectations. She clung to that warm, loved feeling and wrapped herself in it, and drifted away from the dream into a dark, peaceful void. 

She was woken by a pair of strong arms lifting her from the sofa. “Jack,” she murmured sleepily. “You came back.”

“I said I would,” he replied, his low voice smiling at her. 

“What time is it?”

“Late. Time for bed.”

“Mmm…” She nuzzled her cheek against his shirtsleeve, then frowned, her eyes still closed. “You don’t smell like her…”

She drifted back into an uneasy sleep before he could respond. 

When she next opened her eyes, she was in bed. Their marriage bed, Jack’s bed. He had placed her gently on the right side, where she had always slept. The lamp on the bureau was on, and Jack was undressing. His suit jacket and waistcoat had already been hung up, neatly, in their accustomed places. She watched him thread out his cufflinks and put them in their box, and then smooth and fold away his tie in its tray in the wardrobe. It must not have been too dirty, from being used as an impromptu handkerchief… Had he always been this precise and methodical, she wondered, and she had just never noticed? Or was it making an extra impression on her now because of how terribly Sidney—how terribly Mr. Fletcher treated his clothing?

Jack spied her in the looking-glass. “Go back to sleep, Rosemary,” he urged. 

Tears sprang to Rosie’s eyes. No one called her that anymore, just as no one ever called Jack “John” anymore. Not since his mother had died. Dear sweet motherly Sylvia Robinson, who had practically adopted Rosie from the moment they met, and who had nursed her through her terrible miscarriage. 

The death of her own mother had been painful and exhausting, but losing Mother Sylvia had ripped a hole in Rosie’s heart that she hadn’t ever been able to cover, not even for Jack’s sake. He had needed her, when his mother passed, and she had been too stunned to be of any good to him. And then later that year, there had been the awful business with Jack’s sister and her son, on top of all the other problems between them, and it had all seemed like too much… “Do you resent me, Jack?” she found herself asking, her voice thick and muzzy with sleep but her mind surprisingly clear. “For leaving when I did?”

Jack removed his shirt and stuffed it into the laundry bag that still hung from the knob of the closet door. “Of course not.”

“But it was such an awful time… and you needed me.”

He stiffened so suddenly that she could see every muscle in his back, outlined through the fabric of his singlet. Then he came to sit beside her, perching on the bed and reaching out to grip her hand. His face in the yellow lamplight was mournful. “I needed you, yes. And I did resent you at the time, yes. But I had to let you go. You were trying so hard to do everything for me, to be everything for me, and I couldn’t give you anything in return. I couldn’t…” His jaw tightened painfully. “I couldn’t ask you to stay, and expect you to keep pretending to be the dutiful happy wife when there didn’t seem to be any hope that things would get better.”

Rosie stroked the side of his hand with her thumb. “You tried too, Jack.”

“I did. I tried to be a better man than the one who came back from France. I’m still trying.” He closed his eyes briefly, coughed to clear his throat, then leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Now. Try to stop worrying, at least for tonight.”

“…You’ll stay? I don’t want you to sleep on the sofa…”

“If you like, so long as you stay put.” Jack groaned. “I feel like I could sleep for a hundred years.”

He didn’t bother to cover himself while he finished undressing for bed. There was nothing about his body that she didn’t already know blindfolded. “You’re back in training,” she commented, noting the once-again beautifully defined muscles of his shoulders and thighs. 

“I’ve been getting out from behind my desk more. Biking, swimming. Playing tennis.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” 

He pulled his pajama trousers on over his bare skin and then turned off the lamp. He slid under the covers and she went to his arms as easily and simply as if the last ten years had never happened. He was warm and smooth, his muscles hard, his breathing light and a little ragged with her nearness. 

She didn’t try to arouse him. She no longer had any interest in Jack as a lover; it was only because he had been once that she needed to feel his bare skin against hers. He was familiar. He was safe. 

“Thank you, for this. I know you wanted to be with her tonight…” Jack said nothing. “Is… is she good to you, Jack?”

“We’re not a couple, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“… _Really?_ ”

His lips twitched. “Did your father tell you that, to try and make you jealous?”

“What he told me was that she was going to ruin you, and that scared me. I can’t help feeling protective about you. What I _saw_ made me assume the two of you were together.” Rosie touched his face. “You’re so comfortable together, so… assured. And she’s clearly besotted with you.”

Jack sighed. “Rosie, you’re tired. And Phryne’s… Miss Fisher is very attached to me, I know that, but as to besotted—“

“She’s desperately in love with you, Jack. As much as you are with her.”

“Sleep now,” said Jack, hugging her briefly. His voice didn’t change, but she heard the hitch in his lungs. He was holding back tears. 

She slept only fitfully for the rest of the night, catching brief snatches of rest in the manner of an uneasy cat. Mostly she laid in Jack’s arms, listening to his steady breathing. He had always been the lighter sleeper of the two, but tonight his exhaustion had overridden his training.

Very early that morning, before dawn, she inched out of his embrace and slipped out of the bedroom, taking his flannel dressing gown as she went. She shut the door silently and went into the chilly kitchen to make tea. Everything was as she remembered it from the last time she had been in the house, five and a half years prior, except for the new linoleum floor Jack had mentioned. Kettle, tea leaves, cups, sugar. The milk in the icebox looked dubious, so she left it. 

She curled up at the little kitchen table and sipped, and gazed out the window onto the carefully wrapped and covered topography of Jack’s garden. He had so many delicate flowers out there, but it looked like he had made sure to protect them all against the cold…

They had been so skittish with each other, she and Jack, when he came home from the war. It was like being virginal newlyweds all over again, which was impressive, considering that neither of them had been precisely virginal when they went to the altar. Both the Sanderson girls had been raised to be proper, demure, and obedient daughters, but while Rosie couldn’t claim to have anything like the Honourable Miss Fisher’s rumoured experience of the male sex, she hadn’t been entirely ignorant before her marriage. 

She smiled wistfully, remembering how she and her handsome constable had come up with all different ways to evade chaperones and sneak away from picnic and boating parties, so they could have a few moments of privacy. Kissing had led to cuddling, cuddling had led to touching, touching had led, not long after their engagement party, to the indescribable bliss of Jack’s fingers tentatively exploring between her thighs, and the wonderment of feeling his manhood harden inside her hand.

In the end, the only reason they’d waited until their wedding night to actually make love was because they hadn’t been able to be alone long enough to do the deed beforehand. Rosie’s smile faded. _If we’d been left alone then,_ she wondered sadly, _would we have been better prepared for what came later?_

They had both been so alone, during the war and after, unable to communicate the things they were feeling, the slow realization that those four years apart had changed them both, and Jack most of all. The sweet serious pillow talk of their early marriage was gone forever, and for a while, it had seemed as though the lovemaking was gone as well. He had come home to her, changed in mind and injured in body, a great slick red gash over the place where his thigh met the rest of him. 

She had been so frightened of hurting him, when all she wanted to do was hold him and take him inside her and forget the past four years had ever happened, and Jack was so terrified that he would be able to do nothing that he had made himself unable to do anything. The mutual society and comfort of their marriage became mutual fear.

That was when Jack had taken up gardening in earnest. It had been a casual hobby before the war, now it was an obsession. He dug up the soil and spaded and mulched and exhausted himself in his passion, and collected and bred rare orchids and gave them the tenderness he wanted to give his wife. 

It hurt. Looking back, Rosie cringed in sympathy for her younger self to realize just how much it had hurt. Not only to feel overlooked and ignored in favor of flowers, but having to accept that there was nothing she could do to help her husband out of his shell. He went to the station, he came home, he ate and talked of empty pleasantries over supper, and he read and worked in the garden. Most nights he stayed up until long after Rosie had gone to bed. Sometimes it seemed as though he stayed up through the night and straight into morning, because he would be up and dressed and reading the paper when she rose.

Then one day in early summer, she had made a decision. If it had been the first of many, it might have been the saving of their marriage well before it was in danger, but it had been the only time Rosie considered that what Jack needed more than a return to normal life was a respite from her demand for it. She couldn’t talk to him or ease his mind, but she could sit with him in his garden while he worked. 

So she began taking her book and lemonade out into the garden rather than onto the front porch, of an evening. Sometimes she brought mending or knitting; it brought a smile to his face to see her working on his new Abbotsford scarf. Mostly it was a book. She didn’t have his lovely voice, but he liked hearing her read to him, even if the only comments he made were to criticise Edgar Wallace’s grasp of police procedure. She knew, because when she threatened to stop, Jack would put down his spade and garden fork and come over to kiss her cheek. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he would always say, his soil-covered fingers light and lingering on the back of her hand.

One warm day, though, when he put down his spade and his fork, it was to take her in his arms and kiss her the way he had before, when there was only him and her and the sweet knowledge that they were alone. He smelled of clean fresh soil and green growing things and tasted like honeysuckle, and they made love in his garden, tenderly and slowly, as though trying not to crush the grass beneath their backs. 

Rosie wept silently, remembering. _I’m so tired of crying…_

When Jack woke and found her crying over his sleeping orchids, he asked no questions. He only folded her into his arms and kissed her gently.

“If it was summer again,” Rosie murmured against his bare chest, “I’d ask you to make love to me there, the way you used to, so that you would be the last man who touched me, instead of him.” 

“If it was summer again, sweetheart, I would lay you on the grass, if only for an hour, and love you as I did then.”

She sighed, and nuzzled her cold cheek against his warm skin. It was a pretty dream, and she was grateful to him for it, but there was no question of them sleeping together now. The time for that had passed. It was winter, and the garden was covered and quiet.

“I have to say, though… you were _much_ better in bed than Sidney was.”

Jack blushed. All over. “Um, thank you,” he mumbled, running a hand through his sleep-tousled hair, so like the bashful boy that Rosie had fallen in love with when she was nineteen and carefree that she couldn’t help laughing. 

“Thank you, Jack,” she smiled. There were still tears in her eyes, but now she could hold them there. 

Over breakfast, they decided what to do next. “I can go back to my sister’s,” she said. “Most of my things are still stored at Phoebe’s, although I will have to retrieve my clothes and day-to-day things from Mr. Fletcher’s house, at some point.” It went without saying that her engagement to Sidney Fletcher was over, and she felt a warm friendliness towards her former husband for not even needing to ask. 

“I telephoned your sister last night,” Jack said, munching toast with a strange expression. “I wanted to give her some idea, before the press got wind of this. And I wanted to let her know you were safe.”

“Was she surprised to know I was here?”

Jack shook his head. “It’s… comforting,” he said, awkwardly, “that your people didn’t hold the divorce against me. Especially Phoebe, given her situation.”

Rosie poked at her buttered eggs. “Given her situation with Bob, she probably envies me.”

“It’s different for them. He’s an invalid.”

“He’s also got a terrible temper, and no self-control. It’s not his fault, I know,” Rosie said quickly, holding up a hand to forestall what was an old and well-trodden argument. “But I always felt grateful to you, that explosive fits of temper were not something you ever inflicted on me.”

“…Well, I did get into foul moods, sometimes.”

“So did I,” she said ruefully. She watched him lovingly spread marmalade on a triangle of toast. “Since when did you become so tender of your morning toast?” The strange expression came back, and he mumbled something. “What?”

“I said, ‘Miss Fisher likes to steal my toast.’”

Rosie tried, but she couldn’t quite stifle a snort. 

“Why the women in my life choose to shower me with petty larcenies, I will never understand…”

They dressed together in the bedroom, in companionable silence. The lack of awkwardness felt perfectly natural, and yet strange; it still seemed like they _should_ be more awkward with one another. It wasn’t until Rosie was standing in the bathroom, pinning up her hair, that she realized what it was: she had let her guard down. Jack had wanted to help her, and she had let him. 

It wasn’t conventional, and it wasn’t proper, and it wasn’t going to look good in the press when they inevitably found out… but it was what they had both needed. 

“Thank you, Jack,” she said softly. 

“Hmm?” He looked up from fighting with his cufflinks. 

“Nothing…” Rosie smiled and rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the wrists. “Let me.”

“I called Collins a little while ago, told him I’d be away from the station today. Well, I have to take you to your sister’s,” he explained, when Rosie looked a question up at him. “And she should have the official version of what’s happening with George… and I didn’t want you to have to tell her alone.”

She took a deep breath. “I appreciate that. But there’s something I’d like you to do for me first.”

He was understandably surprised at her request, but she stood firm. “I have to do this, Jack.”

“Of course, but… today?”

“Today. Before I lose my nerve.”

Jack gifted her with the slight half-smile that said so much more than it seemed to. “I’ve never once known that to happen.”

So he did as she asked. He drove her to St. Kilda, and parked the car in front of Phryne Fisher’s house, and they went up the stairs together and asked her very polite, very correct manservant if the lady of the house was home to visitors. 

“Of course, Inspector. She’s in the parlour. Shall I take your coats?”

“That’s all right, Mr. Butler, we won’t be long.”

“Very good, sir.” With a smile, he bowed them into the parlour, where Phryne sat reading her morning mail. She had started to get up when she heard Jack’s voice, but stared in utter astonishment when she saw Rosie. “The Inspector, and Miss Sanderson to see you, Miss Fisher.”

Jack nodded to his hostess but hung back. “Actually, Mr. Butler,” he said apologetically, with a discreet glance at Rosie to confirm that this was what she wanted, “I’m afraid I missed my breakfast this morning. I don’t suppose there’s a chance of an early lunch...?”

“Oh, by all means, Inspector! I can whip you up some sandwiches in no time at all.”

Jack gave her and Phryne both an encouraging smile, and then obediently followed Mr. Butler to the kitchen. 

Rosie took a deep breath. “Miss Fisher... Phryne, if I may still call you that? I asked Jack to bring me here this morning. I wanted to apologize for the things I said, when I was last in your home. I had no right.”

“You thought I was in the process of destroying Jack’s professional life,” said Phryne, gesturing to a chair. “A feat he was quite prepared to accomplish all on his own, if necessary, to see that justice was done.” She offered Rosie tea, and when it was declined, poured herself a fresh cup and curled up in the chair opposite. “It’s an admirable quality, in a man. I’m not surprised he still has a hold on your heart... or you on his,” she added, very gently. 

“That may be true,” said Rosie, kneading her purse anxiously, “but the fact remains, whatever Jack and I are to one another now, I had no business questioning your handling of the case, or your relationship with Jack. He’s always spoken very highly of your abilities as a detective.”

Phryne brightened considerably. “Has he?” 

“He has, and I’ll thank you not to mention that I repeated that to you,” Rosie said dryly. 

“My lips are sealed.” The smile Phryne gave her over their shared little secret was one of sheer mischief. It struck Rosie, not for the first time, that this was a woman she might easily have been friends with, if not for the complication of Jack’s presence. But was that really that much of a complication? 

“It was my father, you know,” Rosie said, somewhat haltingly, “who had insisted that you were bad for Jack, both personally and professionally.”

“You couldn’t know that he had his own reasons for wanting Jack to stop his association with me.” Phryne sipped her tea idly, watching over the gilt rim of the little porcelain cup as Rosie clicked open her purse and rummaged through it. “If it’s any sort of consolation,” she commented, almost against her better judgment, “I do know what it’s like to have a father who ends up being a disappointment... and to have a man who wasn’t worth the agony of loving.”

An ugly lump loomed in Rosie’s throat. She pulled a large white handkerchief from her purse, to have something to twist in her hands besides her poor abused clutch purse. “The girls who were on the ship... are they safe?”

“They’re all fine,” Phryne assured her. “Still terrified and a little worse for wear, but all whole and unharmed. We found them in time. They’ve been through hell, but sometimes you find you’ve come out stronger for the experience. I did.” To Rosie’s surprise, Phryne reached out and gripped her hand. “You will, too.”

Overwhelmed by her kindness, Rosie felt the tears coming hot and strong, but refused to give into them. She dabbed her eyes with the wrinkled handkerchief and then choked out a laugh. “This is Jack’s,” she said, shaking her head. “I always had a terrible habit of stealing his hankies and not giving them back. It always upset his sense of order.”

“That’s all right,” Phryne grinned. “There’s just something about that man and his sense of order that begs to be upset. I steal his toast all the time. And speaking of food, I think I’ll just go see if Jack needs help escaping from the kitchen. Once Mr. Butler gets his clutches on an appreciative palate, it’s difficult to get them away!” She excused herself and slipped out the French doors, closing them gently behind her. 

But apparently, Jack was not very far away at all. “She looks shattered,” Rosie overheard Phryne saying.

“She’ll make it,” Jack replied simply. “There’s fight in her, and she’s not alone.”

“No. Not so long as she’s got you to rely on.”

Was that wistfulness Rosie heard in the indomitable Miss Fisher’s voice? _So Jack wasn’t trying to spare my feelings… they really aren’t together._

“Really?” said Jack, in that all-too-casual way he had, when he needed to deflect attention away from himself. “And here I was thinking she could rely on both of us.”

 _No, they’re not ‘together,’_ Rosie thought, with some wistfulness of her own. _They’ve moved beyond ‘together.’_

“Why didn’t you ever tell me anything about her?” Phryne continued, more carefully. 

Jack was silent for a moment. “Because… talking about Rosie would have meant talking about the man I used to be. And the war. And how much of a mess I made of my marriage. I shut her out, Phryne. I made her leave. It hurt too much to talk about. Even the good parts.”

“But there _were_ good parts.” She seemed very concerned, as though she needed to know that Jack’s former marriage hadn’t been entirely loveless.

 _It wasn’t,_ Rosie said to herself. Even when they couldn’t talk anymore, even when they were no longer husband and wife in anything but name, there had still been love. _There still is love,_ she realized, with a growing sense of peace. 

“Even the worst marriage has its bright spots,” Jack continued. “We held onto them for as long as we could. After a while, that wasn’t enough anymore, but thinking about them… It made going our separate ways easier for both of us.”

Separate, yes... but not so far that they couldn’t still be there to offer a shoulder to cry on and a safe bed to sleep in, when needed. And knowing that made it easier for Rosie to thank Phryne again for her help and her hospitality, and to walk out of the house with Jack at her side and her head held high. 

She was tired, she was hurt, she was heartsick and weary and had to steel herself to relate all of yesterday’s awful happenings to her poor sister... but she didn’t have to do it alone. 

Jack reached out to open the car door. Rosie put a hand on his arm. “Look at me, Jack Robinson.” He did so, tilting his head slightly in silent query. 

She studied his face for a moment or two, and then sighed. “You love her.”

“I do. God help me. And I love you,” said Jack softly. “I never once stopped.”

“I know… I know.” She hugged him. “I love you, too, still. Always. It’s the wrong love for a marriage, but for friends…”

He smiled his half-smile at that, and kissed her cheek. “Let’s go, then.”


End file.
